Albedo 0.39

Vangelis | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (April 29, 1997)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Windham Hill Records
• ASIN: B000000NN4
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Audio Cassette  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Music
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #178,215 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 36 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The crowning achievement of "Cosmic music". August 5, 2000

By Felix Matathias VINE™ VOICE

Format:Audio CD

My credentials: Countless hours of listening to electronic music since I was a child.

My favourites: Klaus Schulze (the 70's analog albums), Tangerine Dream (the 70's analog albums), Jarre (the first 3 albums), Vangelis (the 70's analog albums).

The favourite of my favourites(of the lighter tone space music): Albedo 0.39 and Spiral by Vangelis

Because a review is not helpful if you dont know the taste of the reviewer. I think that the above comments will give you a hint.

This album is a recording that belongs to the highest achievements of music as a whole. It is a treasure and I am glad that I was fortunate enough to grow up in an environment that appreciated this kind of music. Vangelis explores the universe with this music and all listeners around the world follow him in a journey through creation, evolution and nucleogenesis. Carl Sagan used this music for his popular TV series "Cosmos", a great influence for my point of view of the world and probably one of the reasons that I became a particle physicist!

As I have written in another review for Tangerine Dream, Vangelis is not only a musician. He is a researcher. His studio is not only a music studio but an experimental lab. It is not far from the accelerators that physicist use to unveil the laws of the universe. They do it with mathematics, Vangelis does it with analog synthesizers. It is the same thing. Another thing that adds up to the brilliance of the album and to the musical genius of Vangelis is that he was among the first to explore this kind of technology. He was at the forefront of this "research". Not only he mastered it well but he became the world leader in space music.

I really dont have words to describe this brilliant, inspiring, captivating music. No one deserves to be called a music lover if he or she has not listened to this album (a rather strong statement but its true).

P.S. This review applies to both Albedo 0.39 and Spiral because these 2 albums comprise a musical entity of Vangelis work (and not because I want to repeat myself).

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Albedo 0.39 December 19, 2003

By Albrecht Moritz

Format:Audio CD|Amazon Verified Purchase

One reviewer here stated that Vangelis is comparable with Mozart and Beethoven and that he is the greatest composer of the 20th century. I cannot quite agree. Vangelis' composing does not have the degree of sophistication and refinement that the music of Mozart and Beethoven possesses and also the music of the best contemporary "classical" composers, such as Stockhausen and Boulez, just to name two (the former is also one of the most important pioneers of electronic music, see for example his Gesang der Juenglinge (1956) and his Kontakte (1960), and has created awe-inspiring synth music as well, such as Oktophonie (1991) - all those works are available at stockhausendotorg).

Vangelis' composing in Albedo 0.39 at times - though not always - seems a bit coarse, abrupt and when it comes to changing keys, simplistic (there should be more modulation involved) and a tad too obvious (arguably, the often maligned but in my view also great Chariots of Fire, for example, is more mature in that respect). However, his craft of composing is sufficiently impressive such that in connection with his truly awesome musical inspiration, the sheer power of his sonic imagination, his innovative and soulful use of synthesizer timbres that also convincingly adapts these to the diverse development stages of a given track, and his astonishing mastery of a great variety of styles, Albedo 0.39 becomes a fantastic and rewarding musical experience. The combination of above virtues also clearly makes Vangelis one of the greatest electronic musicians.

Moreover, the sometimes found simpleness of presentation of musical ideas (there is enough satisfying complexity as well) by Vangelis in Albedo 0.39, rather than routinely being just simplistic, often seems to be the result of a superior musical mind that knows that appropriate simpleness may be useful to achieve a powerful emotional effect. The abrupt transitions in the music and the few sudden - even slightly naive - outbursts of climactic, glorious or triumphant tone (on occasion they seem to symbolize moments of star birth) can be remarkable in their power, and sometimes the sudden transitions in the music appear to be sheer genius, such as in the track Alpha.

In this track of moderate tempo Vangelis paints boldly with broad brush strokes, presenting the original theme and counterthemes to it in varied and inspired ways, with the variations either dropping in suddenly or - towards the end - smoothly developing from the previous material. The large-scale build-up of this 6-minute-piece, easily going from a quiet, delicate "ticking clock" atmosphere to a glorious, free-flowing climax, is simply astonishing. The build-up is able to sustain unerring, powerful directionality over the very diverse stages, a directionality that is also aided by the seamless integration of the solidly driving rock rhythm into the tension of development.

As pointed out by others, the range of music on Albedo 0.39 is huge. You get quality synth-pop (Pulstar; I love those chords ferociously slashing through the music), jamming jazz-rock (Main Sequence), fast-paced and exciting power-rock where the thematic/melodic lines chase with high speed (Nucleogenesis 1 and 2), the above somewhat ballad-like Alpha, and a few quiet pieces that partially show Eastern timbral and melodic influences (especially Freefall).

I agree with many reviewers here that Albedo 0.39 is a most important and impressive work of electronic music. And highly enjoyable to!

Two more points:

1. Vangelis' playing of drums and percussion, though maybe not wizzard-hand virtuosic, is musically just awesome. Always the right and amazing accents.

2. Two passages in Albedo 0.39 sound eerily similar to two highly characteristic and very unique passages in Bruckner symphonies, in # 3 (1889 version) and in # 6 (1881). Compare Pulstar 2'52" to 3'10" with 11'08" to 11'28" in the Karajan recording of Bruckner Symphony 3, 1st movement and Nucleogenesis Part I 5'13" to 5'36" with 13'26" to 13'52" in the Karajan recording of Bruckner Symphony 6, 1st movement (the magical soft treatment of the main theme in horns and trumpets leading to the final climax of the coda; the Karajan recordings of these symphonies are the ones to get).--Are these striking similarities pure coincidence?

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars By far the best Vangelis album I've ever heard! December 2, 2001

By BENJAMIN MILER

Format:Audio CD

Vangelis, one of the biggest names of electronic music, has always been a very frustrating figure to me. He'd release some fantastic albums that just simple amazes me, and some truly wretched albums. For me, Albedo 0.39 is simply one of the greatest electronic albums I have ever heard! The ever overrated Chariots of Fire is absolutely nothing compared to this gem (in fact I'm pretty sure some people are turned off by Vangelis because of Chariots of Fire - don't judge all his works by that soundtrack album). Except for the Aphrodite's Child albums, Albedo is by far his more rock oriented album. The music here is all upbeat and very easy to get in to. Some of these songs might be familiar to you if you watched Carl Sagan's Cosmos, as "Pulstar" and "Alpha" were featured on that series. The album is also full of killer jamming as well, which more than demonstrates Vangelis was really enjoying himself big time on this album. Plus I love how the album ends with the title track which includes spoken, educational dialog about the Earth and its features (like diameter, distance from sun, and of course, its albedo). So forget Chariots of Fire, if you want real Vangelis, you must have Albedo 0.39, even if you're not much for Vangelis.